Nashville Police In Final Report Downplay Covenant Shooter’s Transgender Identity, Hatred Of Christianity
The final police report on Nashville’s deadly Covenant School shooting, released more than two years after the attack, claims the motive of the attack was “notoriety” and makes little mention of the shooter’s radical positions on gender, race, or religious animus.
While pages from the writings of the 28-year-old woman who murdered three children and three adults at The Covenant School in March 2023 demonstrate that she was fixated on gender ideology and “white privilege,” police say that she was primarily motivated by a desire for notoriety. Investigators said that neither her documented hatred of Christianity or affluent white people played a role in her targeting of The Covenant School, a Presbyterian school in a wealthy area of Nashville.
“Regarding why she selected The Covenant, many have speculated [the shooter] selected this location for racial, religious, or economic motives,” the report said. “It is certainly true she raged over these topics at times in her writings. But none of those motives impacted her decision to attack The Covenant.”
Instead, the police said that Covenant was targeted because the attacker, who was killed by police, believed that she would receive greater notoriety by murdering young children. Three of the victims of the March 27, 2023, attack — Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney — were all just 9 years old. The other victims of the attack were adults Michael Hill, Katherine Koonce, and Cynthia Peak.
Throughout the report, police made little mention of the attacker’s transgender identity, only mentioning that she identified as a male and that she had made references to wanting to transition. (Read more from “Nashville Police In Final Report Downplay Covenant Shooter’s Transgender Identity, Hatred Of Christianity” HERE)
